"I mean I quite understand now. I thought--I don't know what I thought. You're so pretty, you know. And he has had so very many--love-affairs." "He hasn't one with me," said Betty briefly. "Ah, you're still angry. And no wonder. Do forgive me, Miss Desmond, and let's be friends." Betty's look as she gave her hand was doubtful. But the hand was given. "And you'll keep my poor little secret?" "I should have thought you would have been proud for him to know how much you care." "Ah, my dear," Lady St. Craye became natural for an instant under the transfiguring influence of her real thoughts as she spoke them, "my dear, don't believe it! When a man's sure of you he doesn't care any more. It's while he's not quite sure that he cares." "I don't think that's so always," said Betty. "Ah, believe me, there are 'more ways of killing a cat than choking it with butter.' Forgive the homely aphorism. When you have a lover of your own--or perhaps you have now?" "Perhaps I have." Betty stood on guard with a steady face. "Well, when you have--or if you have--remember never to let him be quite sure. It's the only way." The two parted, with a mutually kindly feeling that surprised one as much as the other. Lady St. Craye drove home contrasting bitterly the excellence of her maxims with the ineptitude of her practice. She had let him know that she cared. And he had left her. That was two years ago. And, now that she had met him again, when she might have played the part she had recommended to that chit with the long hair--the part she knew to be the wise one--she had once more suffered passion to overcome wisdom, and had shown him that she loved him. And he had kissed her. She blushed in the dusk of her carriage for the shame of that kiss. But he had told that girl that he was engaged to her. A delicious other flush replaced the blush of shame. Why should he have done that unless he really meant--? In that case the kiss was nothing to blush about. And yet it was. She knew it. She had time to think in the days that followed, days that brought Temple more than once to her doors, but Vernon never. Betty left alone let down her damp hair and tried to resume her drawing. But it would not do. The emotion of the interview was too recent. Her heart was beating still with anger, and resentment, and other feelings less easily named. Vernon was to come to fetch her at seven. She would not face him. Let him go and dine with the woman he belonged to! Betty went out at half-past six. She would not go to Garnier's, nor to Thirion's. That was where he would look for her.